Afterlife
by karebear
Summary: For you, there are no second chances. Pre-Day 5.


For you, there are no second chances.

It was foolishly optimistic to ever think that there might be, but some part of you had hoped that after a lifetime of fighting those trying to kill you, you might be allowed to die.

You should have known better.

Who are you now?

Frank Flynn, but Jack Bauer shines through, in small things.

He's there when, after rising early only to learn you're not needed at the oil rig yet again, you agree join the others at the small town's lone bar, which opens early and knows to expect you. And there, when your coworkers tear through the newspaper for the sports section, you hunger for the editorials written by political analysts who agree with you, if not the majority of American voters, that President Logan is not the man who should be leading this country.

You followed the elections waiting with bated breath for something to happen. Nothing did, but you wonder about everything that went down behind closed doors that the public, which now includes you, will never find out about.

The 14-year-old you're living with laughs when he comes home from school to you find you watching C-Span. He can't follow it for more than a few seconds without growing bored, so he changes the channel to some action movie on TNT, and you make him laugh again when you list everything wrong with their portrayal of the military.

You kick his ass in Halo, and for a brief moment the X-box controller feels like a sniper rifle in your hands.

And you can't tell him why you know the things you know.

You close your eyes to go to sleep and hear the distinctive tones of CTU's in-house phone system.

You want to be Frank Flynn, but Jack Bauer's memories live inside your head and in your blood and in your bones, and you can't kill them no matter how much you may want to, how hard you try.

You wish his death were real as you play chess with Derek and try not to remember that this is what you were doing with Kim the night before her mother died.

You can't tell him that you have a daughter, that you had a wife and she died because you couldn't save her.

You can't tell him that you've saved the world from imminent destruction, not once, but on four separate major occasions and several smaller ones.

You can't tell him about the friends you've watched die in the process.

You can't tell him about the blood on your hands. That guilt is yours alone.

You can't tell him that there is someone out there that you still love, a strong and capable woman who is heartbroken now, believing that you will never come back to her. That you can't.

She is right, on both counts.

But you cannot tell Derek any of these things, and you can't tell his mother either, so you move the pieces on the board in silence, not caring if you win or lose.

You can't be this boy's father, because you were already a father once and you screwed it up. He is not yours and he never will be, because of all of the secrets that you are forced to keep.

You're not sure what you would say if you could say anything. Keeping secrets comes as naturally to you as breathing, after working in various levels of classified for decades.

It takes effort to remember that Frank Flynn probably doesn't even know what OPSEC stands for, unless he watches the same movies as Derek Huxley.

You carry all of this inside of you, and it finally crashes down when you flip on the TV for background noise, and before you even get to CNN, you are assaulted with the news of President Palmer's death.

Any illusion that Jack Bauer is dead is shattered completely with the phone call from Chloe, desperate and hopeful and crying out, not to Frank Flynn, the ghost, the empty shell, but to Jack, the hero.

The one who will die to save his country, because that is the bargain that you made.

The one who will give up the promise of death because you are still needed.

Some part of you had hoped that you might be allowed to try again, to have a family you could be honest with, to be there at the high school sporting events and band concerts instead of doing all of the things that you will never be able to talk about.

Some part of you had hoped, but you knew that hope was a lie.

Because for you, Jack Bauer, there are no second chances.


End file.
